Eastleigh by-election: never mind Nick Clegg's sex-pest woes, David Cameron has the most to lose

With less than 24 hours before polls open in Eastleigh, I still haven’t spoken to a single Conservative who thinks their party is going to win tomorrow. Of course, we have to be wary of by-election expectations management, but as far as I can tell, Tory bets really are on a Lib Dem hold tomorrow night. Isn’t that a remarkable state of affairs?

Consider the following:

Eastleigh is one of the Conservatives’ target seats, one of the constituencies the party believes it must win to secure a majority at the next general election. They are fighting to take the seat from the Liberal Democrats. The outgoing Lib Dem MP has admitted to a criminal offence and given up his seat. The Lib Dem leadership is drowning in reports that senior figures turned a blind eye to a sex pest in their ranks. The Lib Dems have been the biggest losers from Coalition, shedding many of their natural Left-leaning voters since getting into bed with the Conservatives.

Yet for all that, the Tories still show the signs of a party facing defeat. Indeed, No 10 seems to have started to writing its script for a loss: MPs are being told that any Conservative defeat would be down to a strong Ukip performance, the Ukippers picking up anti-Tory votes from the Lib Dems and Labour. Don’t be surprised if Tory high command tries to offer the troops a strategic silver lining in the tactical cloud, arguing that Eastleigh could ultimately help the Tories see off the Ukip threat in 2015. This proves that a vote for Ukip only costs the Tories seats, they’ll tell disaffected Conservatives flirting with Farage’s mob.

And no doubt the performance of Ukip (and Labour, come to that) will be an interesting part of the post mortem examination in Eastleigh. But it will be a secondary issue. If the Lib Dems do hold the seat, the single, central, inexorable and dreadful fact will be this: a Conservative loss in a seat the party could and indeed must win, in remarkably favourable circumstances.

Should that come to pass, expect any number of Tory frailties to be examined: the loss of grass-roots activists in important seats; the party’s apparent inability to appeal to C2 skilled working class voters; the lack of a compelling national narrative from the top of the party. And remember, Eastleigh is in many ways a dress rehearsal for May’s local elections. Some Tories who are privately despairing over Eastleigh say they’ll stay quiet and loyal this week, but promise no such reticence if May is bloody.

Nick Clegg is having a dreadful week, and rightly so; some Tories are openly enjoying Lib Dem agonies, and hoping Eastleigh compounds them. But remember, David Cameron has at least as much at stake in this by-election as his deputy, and potentially more.